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In /Bbemoriam. 



Howell Edmunds Jackson. 



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Howell Edmunds Jackson. 















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PROCEEDINGS. 



Monday, October 14, 1895. 

The Bar of the Supreme Court of the United 
States and the officers of the Court met in the 
Court Room in the Capitol at 11 o'clock. 

On motion of Mr. William A. Maury Mr. 
Richard Olney was called to the Chair, and, on 
motion of Mr. W. Hallf.tt Phillips, Mr. J AMES 
H. McKenney was elected Secretary. 

On motion of Mr. J. M. Dickinson the Chair 
appointed a committee on resolutions : 

committee on resolutions. 

Mr. J. M. Dickinson, Chairman. Mr. Thomas B. Turlkv. 

Mr. Samuel P. Walker. Mr. Samuel Shellabarc.er. 

Mr. Benjamin F. Aver. Mr. William A. Maury. 

Mr. Henry M. Duffieu). Mr. Thomas Wilson. 

Mr. A. H. Garland. Mr. W. A. SUDDUTH. 

On motion of Mr. William A. Maury, the 
meeting then adjourned, subject to the call of the 
Chairman. 

3 



Monday, November 18, 1895. 
The meeting reassembled at 11 o'clock, upon 
the call of the Chairman. Mr. Richard Olney, 

ii resuming the Chair, said: 
Custom makes it the privilege as well as the duty 
of the presiding officer of this meeting to himself 
actively participate in its proceedings. I undertake 
the part your partiality has assigned me with entire 
consciousness of the many disqualifications under 
which I labor. My personal acquaintance with Air. 
Justice Jackson was of the most limited character. 
Two or three brief social occasions, with one or two 
professional appearances before him as a member of 
the Supreme Court of the United States, comprise 
the whole of it. Others will be able to speak of him 
as a schoolmate or college mate, as a practitioner in 
the same courts with themselves, as a citizen of the 
same State, as the Trial Judge before whom they 
were in constant attendance. I lack any such 
experiences and am without that familiarity with 
tin- details of his history which will make other 
tributes so interesting and instructive. In these 
circumstances, but a single consideration has any 
tendency to justify an attempt on my part to aid in 
the portraiture of Mr. Justice Jackson's character. 



5 

There is a world of wisdom in the saying of Scrip- 
ture that "a prophet is not without honor save in 
his own country and in his own house." His own 
countrymen and his own family are too near the 
prophet, know him too well, see him too microscop- 
ically. For appreciation of his true proportions 
there must be opportunity for comparison, a just 
perspective, and consequently reasonable room and 
distance. It is entirely possible, therefore, that 
though my view of Judge Jackson and his career 
is almost that of a stranger contemplating them 
from a somewhat remote standpoint, I may never- 
theless have reached in some respects a truer esti- 
mate of the whole effect and the whole result than 
if I had walked by his side during every stage of 
his earthly journey. 

Judge Jackson, though of Virginian parentage 
and a graduate of the University of Virginia, was 
nevertheless a thorough Tennesseean. There he 
was born and acquired the rudiments of knowledge; 
there he studied law and began its practice and 
became a leader of the bar; it was Tennessee that 
sent him to Washington as her Senator; it was as 
her citizen that he became Judge of the Circuit 
Court of the United States and thence rose to the 



Bench of the .Supreme Court; in Tennessee lie made 
his home, the abode of wife and children and the cen- 
ter of his affections; and it was thither he returned to 
die after a long and wearisome and pathetic search 
for the strength that was never to be regained. 
Tennessee boasts a long line of illustrious public 
men, but can not point to any one among them that 
does her <>reater honor. She has indeed had sons 
whose lives were fuller of incident and motion and 
dramatic surprises. There was the Jackson of "The 
Hermitage," the Jackson who triumphed at New 
Orleans, who hanged Arbuthnot, who made Peggy 
O'Neil a character of national consequence, who 
removed the deposits, who fought with equal energy 
nullification and a United States bank, and whose 
erect commanding person crowned with its wealth 
of whitened hair, "By the Eternal" on his lips, and 
in his grasp both the baton of the political leader 
and the sword of the soldier, forms one of the most 
picturesque figures on the whole canvas of modern 
history. If such a life be phenomenal in its power 
to fix the public gaze and fascinate the popular 
imagination, that of Judge Jackson can not be too 
much extolled as a potent center of beneficent influ- 
ence none the less valuable and far-reaching in its 



7 
effects because neither glittering nor noisy. If any 
criticism could be made upon Judge Jackson's 
youth, it would seem to be that it was beyond criti- 
cism, that he was uniformly good, that he was not 
young enough, that he was always free from those 
follies and foibles which, as the bubbling over of the 
irrepressible spirits natural to that period of life, 
make the young dear to us almost in the proportion 
that we have to forbear and forgive and forget. 
That the freedom from such frailties indicates a cer- 
tain lack of imagination and of humor is unques- 
tionable, and justifies a deduction borne out by all 
we know of the man. He never at any time of life, 
in any marked degree certainly, exhibited qualities 
of that sort. On the contrary, the child was emphat- 
ically father to the man, and from his youth up he 
was hard-working, exact, logical, loyal to his convic- 
tions and his affections, self-contained and self-poised, 
conscientious and God-fearing. It was these traits 
which surely, if not very swiftly, placed him in the 
front rank of an exceptionally able and learned local 
bar. He seems to have practiced all branches of the 
profession, to have tried cases to the jury as well as 
to the court, and as a getter of verdicts had his due 
share of success. But though he was a clear and 



8 

logical speaker, hehadnot,I think, those exceptional 
powers of eloquence which enable a few gifted mor- 
tals to play upon the hearts of men as a musician 
upon his instrument, and to sweep juries from their 
feet in the rush of the appeal to their sympathies. 
Justice Jackson must, I imagine, have more resem- 
bled a Massachusetts lawyer of whom, at the close 
of a term of court, the foreman of a jury that had 
been giving him all the verdicts naively inquired 
how it was that he always happened to be employed 
on the right side. The secret of success in his case, 
as it must have been in that of Judge Jackson, was 
the jury's faith and trust in the man, their confi- 
dence in his uprightness and his unwillingness 
to deceive them, so that whoever was his opponent 
found the scales of justice only too likely to tip 
against him through the sheer force of his antago- 
nist's unique weight of character. Judge Jackson's 
work as a public man began in 18S0 and continued 
until his death. His vSenatorial career so impressed 
his colleagues that his appointment as United States 
Circuit Judge was due almost as much to their 
enthusiastic indorsement as to the nomination of a 
Democratic President. He was the recipient of a 
similar compliment when President Harrison distin- 



9 

guished the closing days of his administration by 
nominating him to the Bench of the Supreme Court. 
Nothing of course could have elicited these tributes 
from political opponents if they had not reposed 
absolute confidence in the integrity of the man — in 
his capacity to be an honest and upright judge — and 
I believe the man has yet to be found with the hardi- 
hood to charge that Judge Jackson ever decided a 
cause through fear or favor, or otherwise than in 
accordance with his convictions of what the law and 
the facts required. But these marked tributes by 
men from all sections of the country and of all shades 
of politics testify not merely to personal character, 
but to superior legal and judicial qualifications. 
No man who helped to make him Circuit Judge 
ever regretted it, or was surprised when he was com- 
manded to go up higher. His characteristics as a 
judge are so well known both to the bar and the 
people of the country, through common fame and 
the reports of his judicial opinions, that only the 
briefest reference to them need now be made. 
In his treatment of a cause, the first thing to be 
noted is his perfect mastery of the facts. He 
studied them with the utmost care and patience, 
and allowed no detail to escape him. Yet, while 



IO 

canvassing them thoroughly, he also analyzed 
them accurately and rapidly and had a facility 
in the elimination of the essential from the non- 
essential features of a canse which often seemed 
to counsel little less than marvelous. It was this 
faculty which made him particularly felicitons in 
dealing with patent causes, while it is said that he 
could state a complicated account with greater 
certainty and quickness than any clerk in his 
circuit. The legal issues being once clearly 
evolved, there followed a discussion of them which 
was never perfunctor}' and never one-sided. He 
always fully presented the reasons supporting the 
conclusion to which he had come. But he never 
ignored the considerations tending to a different 
conclusion, stated them fully and fairly, and then 
set forth the grounds upon which, in his judgment, 
they ought not to prevail. Thus, defeated lawj-ers 
and disappointed litigants, while regretting that 
the}- had lost, never felt that everything alleged in 
their favor had not been thoroughly considered. It 
will not be claimed, I suppose, that Mr. Justice 
Jack. sox was among the most erudite of the lawyers 
or judges who have adorned the bench or the bar in 
this country. Doubtless many have beeu more 



II 



familiar with black letter, and doubtless many have 
surpassed him in the knowledge to be drawn from 
the infinite stores of ancient and modern legal liter- 
ature. On the other hand, few lawyers or judges 
have ever had a firmer grasp of the essential prin- 
ciples which underlie the administration of justice 
in English-speaking countries. This is especially 
manifest in such of his written opinions as deal 
with questions of constitutional law. Indeed, his 
title to recognition as a great judge might safely 
rest upon his judicial utterances upon that class of 
questions alone. He never dealt with them except 
in a manner the most convincing and satisfactory — 
except as one whose knowledge of the principles of 
our form of government is instinctive and ingrained 
and whose command of the subject is complete. 
The opinions in the Kentucky Bridge case, where 
the Interstate-Commerce Law was under considera- 
tion, and in the Greene Habeas Corpus case, in 
which the anti-trust law was involved, are masterly 
expositions of most important topics of constitu- 
tional law. They are pioneer judgments upon new 
questions and are landmarks in the history of our 
Federal jurisprudence. It is not too high praise 
of them to say that they would do credit to any 



12 

man that ever sat on the bench of any conrt in 
this country. 

Time presses, and I feel myself to be claiming 
an undue share of your attention. I must not 
omit to observe, however, that the judicial career 
of Judge Jackson was in reality just beginning, 
and that, considerable as had been the actual per- 
formance, it was small in comparison with what still 
rested solely in promise. It may be trne that — 

" It sounds like stories from the land of spirits, 
If any man obtains that which he merits, 
Or any merit that which he obtains. ' ' 

Yet every rule has exception, and when Judge 
Jackson was promoted to the Bench of the United 
Slates Supreme Court, there was instant and uni- 
versal recognition of the happy conjuncture of a man 
worthy of the place and of a place worthy of the 
man. I have referred to his life as barren of stirring 
or sensational features. Yet there was at least one 
notable exception, and whoever witnessed Judge 
Jackson's last judicial effort in this Court Room 
participated in an event not merely having great 
national significance, but, in its display of human 
faculties and human emotions in a state of extra- 
ordinary excitement, possessing dramatic elements 



13 

rarely exhibited either within or without the halls 
of Justice. It was much to take part in the memo- 
rable scene then enacted, whether as judge, as 
counsel, as party, or even as spectator. But it was 
reserved for Judge Jackson to identify it with the 
culmination of his honorable career and to give to 
his dissent something of the solemnity of a message 
from beyond the tomb. Fortunate in his life, he 
was even more fortunate in his manner of leaving 
it. "Men fear death," says Lord Bacon, "as chil- 
dren fear to go into the dark." But the terrors of the 
"mortal passage" weaken under the spur of a lofty 
purpose, and to him who, like Judge Jackson, 
unfalteringly confronts his fate at the call of duty 
to be discharged, Heaven sends an exaltation of 
spirit which casteth out fear, aud death is swallowed 
up in victory. 



Mr. J. M. Dickinson, Chairman of the Commit- 
tee on Resolutions, then said: 

The Committee appointed at a meeting of the 
Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
held in the Supreme Court Room at the city of 
Washington, October 14, 1S95, in memory of Mr. 



14 

Justice Jackson, to draft resolutions to be reported 
at an adjourned meeting, present for consideration 
the following 



*& 



RESOLUTIONS: 

On August 8, 1S95, Mr. Justice Howeli, Edmunds Jackson 
departed this life at his home, near Nashville, Tennessee. 

He was born at Paris, Tennessee, in 1S32, obtained his 
academic education in his native State, graduated at the 
University of Virginia, and took the degree of Bachelor of 
L,aws at the Cumberland University, in Tennessee. 

He practiced law at Jackson and Memphis before the civil 
war, and at once displayed those qualities which gave promise 
of the high rank which he subsequently attained in the pro- 
fession. 

lie was an earnest believer in the doctrines of the Whig 
party, was devoted to the Union, and opposed secession. 
After his native State passed the ordinance of secession and 
was threatened with invasion, he, like so many others who 
would have sacrificed their lives, if by this they could have 
removed the cause of strife and assured a happy union, 
adhered, with all of the ardor of his nature, to the side his 
pie had chosen in the conflict. The war suspended the 
activities of civil life, and holding an office under the Con- 
federate Government, which, while one of great trust, left 
him much leisure, he devoted himself throughout the war 
to the most laborious and systematic study of the law, thus 

[uiring an accuracy and breadth of legal knowledge which 
made him so fully equipped for all of the responsible duties 
which came to him. 

After tlii- close of the civil war he practiced law in Jackson 
and Memphis, and achieved a reputation second to none of 



*5 

his competitors. His practice was varied, embracing office 
work of the most delicate and responsible character, and liti- 
gation in all of the State and Federal Courts, and while his 
services were justly prized as a counsellor and as a Chancery 
and Supreme Court lawyer, he was no less successful in the 
severest jury contests, where he achieved great triumphs, not 
by the graces of oratory, which he never cultivated, nor the 
meretriciousness of cunning advocacy, which he scorned, but 
by candor and earnestness, which wou the confidence of 
the jury, and clear, forcible, and logical arguments, which 
convinced them. 

On account of his reputation as a man and lawyer, he was 
called to a seat upon the Court of Referees of Tennessee, 
which was a provisional Supreme Court created to assist the 
regular court to dispose of the vast accumulation of cases 
occasioned by the civil war. He served on this court with 
great credit until its term expired. 

Though never having taken any active part in politics, he 
consented, on account of his great interest in the question of 
the settlement of the State debt of Tennessee, to become a 
candidate on the State Credit ticket for the State Senate. 

Following the custom established by immemorial usage in 
Tennessee, he met his opponent in joint debate and made the 
canvass with so much ability and persuasiveness as to win his 
election in a heated contest, in which he advocated high taxes, 
the most unwelcome cause that could be championed. 

This, though not suspected by him, was the initial point of 
his national career. A deadlock in the selection of a United 
States Senator, for which position he was not a candidate, was 
suddenly solved by his political opponents, who, moved by an 
estimate of his character like that which, on a later occasion, 
caused the President to nominate him to the Supreme Bench, 
came to his support as soon as his friends put his name before 
the Legislature ; and, cooperating with a majority of his own 



i6 

party, elected him on the first ballot. The offices of United 
States Senator, Circuit Judge, and Justice of the Supreme 
Court all came to him in unbroken succession and without 
expectation or effort on his part. 

His career in these honorable and responsible positions is 
too well known to need recapitulation. 

His performance of the labors of his office, even when the 
hand of death rested heavily upon him, will always remain a 
pathetic and inspiring picture in the memory of those who 
saw his heroic efforts. 

IK- was profoundly religious, and an elder in the Presby- 
terian Church. 

His manner was reserved, and yet no one found him diffi- 
cult of approach. He was frank and courageous in expressing 
his opinions of men and measures, yet free from bitterness 
ami personal invective. lie was serious in affairs, but in the 
company of friends was always jovial, enlivening conversation 
witli sprightly humor and pointed anecdote. He felt and 
maintained the dignity of his office, and yet with those ameni- 
ties which in a judge invest the intercourse between bench 
and bar with an atmosphere which is as wholesome as it is 
mils. . 

IK- displayed exact learning, laborious investigation, unfal- 
tering courage, absolute impartiality, and broad patriotism; 
therefore, be it 

Resolved, That the members of the Bar of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, profoundly impressed with the 
great loss sustained by the profession and the Nation in the 
untimely death of Mr. Justice Jackson, desire to record their 
esteem foi the qualities which distinguished his short career 
on the .Supreme Bench, and which gave such perfect assur- 
1 1i.it he was a worthy successor of those distinguished 
Judges who have administered, with such fidelity and ability, 
tlie greatest trust ever confided by a Nation. 



17 

Resolved, That we deeply sympathize with the bereaved 
family of Mr. Justice Jackson, and that a copy of these 
resolutions be presented to them by the Secretary of this 
meeting. 

Resolved, That the Attorney-General be requested to pre- 
sent these resolutions to the Supreme Court in session and 
request that they be recorded. 



REMARKS OF MR. J. M. DICKINSON. 

Mr. Chairman: It may seem out of place for 
one who has done so little to identify himself with 
this Bar, however strongly he may be prompted by 
sentiments of admiration and friendship, to raise 
his voice where there are so many older members 
present, and upon an occasion so memorable, except 
it be merely to read the resolutions with which, as 
Chairman, I have been intrusted, and to enter the 
formal motion for their adoption. 

My own inclination and sense of propriety 
would, under ordinary circumstances, constrain me 
to silence; but, having heard the eloquent tribute 
of one from a State so distant from my own, and 
knowing that there are others present whose pur- 
pose it is to speak in praise of one whose name 
and career reflect such lasting honor upon Ten- 
9069 2 



iS 

nessee, I feel that for me, her only representative 

present on the Committee, to be silent, and not to 
attempt, however feebly, to voice the sentiments of 
her people on this occasion, would be a disloyalty 
that would not be condoned. 

The acquaintance — I trust I may say with par- 
donable pride, the intimate acquaintance — which it 
has been my good fortune to enjoy with Mr. Justice 
Jackson throughout the period of his public life, 
and extending back into the time of his active 
practice at the Bar, makes me competent on this 
occasion, when the record which is to perpetuate 
his memory is being made up by the Bar of the 
Supreme Court of the United States, to testify to 
the esteem in which he was held by his people 
at home. 

When one passes away who has reached exalted 
station, and his record is being reviewed that judg- 
ment may be entered up upon it, knowing, as we do, 
that no man's work is the fruition of one genera- 
tion, but that in it are focused and expressed the 
characteristics of those who have gone before him, 
we turn to inquire who were his forefathers and 
what were his environments. 

While American institutions tolerate no heredi- 



19 
tary titles, and while their spirit, maintained in its 
integrity, pays no tribute to houses of nobility, 
nevertheless, and especially in these times, when 
not only American citizenship, but American sen- 
timent, is being so plentifully diluted, we grate- 
fully recognize the nobility of hereditary American 
worth as the surest guaranty for veneration and 
love of country and the safest guardian of civil 
liberty and self-government. 

The parents of Mr. Justice Jackson were both 
Virginians, coming from families of established 
worth, tracing their lineage far back in the history 
of that venerable Commonwealth. 

Of the personal characteristics of his mother I 
know but little. She died in early life. But if it 
be true that in their sons mothers perpetuate their 
types, then was she richly endowed, for she gave to 
the world but two sons, one of whom became a dis- 
tinguished general in the Confederate service, and 
the other, not by political influence nor by favorit- 
ism, but as a tribute to his worth alone, and in a 
way most extraordinary, was placed in a seat on that 
Bench which, on account of the learning, purity, 
and patriotism of the men who have adorned it and 
the awful power with which it is entrusted — that of 



20 

annulling the acts of a coordinate branch of Gov- 
ernment and sitting in final judgment upon con- 
troversies between sovereign States — surpasses in 
dignity all tribunals known in the history of nations. 

His father was a man of education, a prominent 
physician, aggressive in spirit, a leader among men, 
who impressed himself not only in the affairs of 
private life but in the larger interests that affected 
the entire Commonwealth. 

Sprung from such parentage, born and brought 
up in a State whose citizenship has never had two 
per cent of foreign born, where the Constitution has 
been the text of public debate from the halls of the 
Capitol to the country cross-roads, where the very 
air pulsated with traditions of Kings Mountain and 
of the war of 1812 and the Mexican war, where the 
hero of the Hermitage, the very incarnation of love 
ol country, lived, and where his spirit has always 
abided as an inspiration, Mr. Justice Jackson was 
as true to every American sentiment as the needle 
to the pole. 

It is not my purpose to speak at large upon his 
public career. That has been done and will be done 
by others more competent than myself. I wish to 
reflect here the regard in which he was held in his 



21 

own State, and to show that he was not one of those 
who are not without honor save in their own 
country and their own home. 

The lives of public men present dual phases — 
one turned to the outer world, the other known 
within narrower circles. Too often, like their stat- 
ues, they present a fair exterior, while all within is 
rugged and unseemly. 

The private life of Mr. Justice Jackson was as 
svmmetrical and flawless as his public career. If 
the spear of an Ithuriel had touched the public 
man, and laid bare his private life, no incongruities 
nor deformities would have been revealed to shock or 
grieve us. In all the relations of life, as citizen, 
friend, master, parent, husband, he responded to the 
highest standard of obligations. 

Tennessee witnesses with pride this honor that is 
paid to her sou. For a long time, as an inevitable 
consequence of the civil war, she suffered eclipse in 
national affairs, and her children could only aspire 
to those honors which she alone could bestow. In 
the appointment of Mr. Justice Jackson to this high 
trust she rejoiced to see the old era reestablished, 
and looked forward to a long career of usefulness 
and honor. But an untimely fate has cut him off in 



the plenitude of his powers, when the ripeness of 
his intellect promised the richest harvest, but not 
so soon that he had not established himself in the 
confidence of his countrymen and fixed his reputa- 
tion upon a sure and lasting basis. 

Sadly, but proudly, his native State will enroll his 
name with those of her distinguished sons who, 
for nearly half a century, were such conspicuous 
leaders in shaping the civil and military affairs of 
this Republic. 

Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the Committee, I move 
the adoption of the resolutions. 



Remarks of Mr. William A. Maury. 

Mr. Chairmax: During the short time he sat on 
the Supreme Bench Mr. Justice Jackson was, in 
spite of his modesty and retiring disposition, one of 
the most interesting figures to which the public eye 
was directed. 

The circumstance of his appointment without 
attention to party affiliation, the struggle with official 
duty and with Death that so early began, the loosen- 
ing of the grasp, and then the return, for at least one 



23 

effort more, in the great tax case, the bitterness of 
wormwood following hard upon the promises of 
hope— these clothed him with dramatic interest and 
drew to him general sympathy. 

A judge, like Jackson, is no artificial creation, 
but, in common with the poet, is Nature's gift. He 
comes by a sort of divine commission, and men at 
once recognize and obey him. This, and this alone, 
seems to account for Judge Jackson's growth on the 
Circuit, and for the rapidity of his rise to ascendency 
in the higher sphere. 

Fitted as he was to bind men to law and lead them 
onward toward their ideals, it is grievous that he was 
xintimely taken. 

But he was more than a cold impersonation of 
justice and the law's majesty. He was aglow with 
the sympathies and affections of our common 
humanity — dear to his family, dear to his friends, 
dear to all who came within the Circle of his sweet 
influences. 

This man was marked by the meekness and 
simplicity of greatness, and by its indifference to 
the trappings of high place. The humblest could 
attract his notice without a sense of being the 
recipient of a condescension. 



24 

His parts were admirably interwoven and fitted 
to one another. To warmth and geniality he united 
a cold investigating faculty and a serene, passionless 
judgment, and underlying all was a firmness and 
courasre that entitled him to stand with those other 
Jacksons who have made the name ring world-wide. 
When the torrent of repudiation swept over his 
State, he stood foursquare against it, and "the rage 
of the million commanding things evil" could not 
shake him " in his solid completeness of soul." The 
example will not be forgotten when the countrv 
makes up her jewels. 

He came to the bench as befitted him, and 
"according to that ancient and honorable rule and 
way of law preferment mentioned by Fleta, nee 
prece, nee preiio, nee presmioP It is a fact that 
but for the urgency of the appointing power, over- 
bearing all obstacles, Jackson would not have 
accepted the commission of Circuit Judge, and so 
the greater consummation, to which it led, might 
never have come. 

The country's appreciation of the magnanimity 
and discern men t that suggested Jackson's promo- 
tion to the Supreme Bench will, I am sure, be 
enhanced by a letter lie received from the President 



25 

just after his name was sent to the Senate, which I 
am graciously permitted to make public, and now 
proceed to read: 

[Private.] 

Executive Mansion, 
Washington , February 4. , fSpj. 

My Dear Sir: I have your telegram thanking me for send- 
ing your name to the Senate for the vacant position on the 
Supreme Bench. My acquaintance with you in the Senate 
and the information I have had since from the Bar of your 
Circuit gave me, I thought, the needed assurance that you 
would exercise the duties of this very high and responsible 
office with industry, fidelity, and patriotism. I have never 
believed in a partisan judiciary. Only politics in the larger 
sense should have anything to do with such appointments. I 
would not, of course, appoint to the Supreme Bench a man 
who held views of the Constitution and of the powers of the 
General Government that I thought subverted or diminished 
those necessary powers. I have believed from my knowledge 
of you and representations of others that you were a believer 
in the Nation and did not sympathize with the opinion that 
a United States Marshal was an alien officer or that election 
frauds or any other infraction of the Federal Statutes were 
deserving of aught but indignant condemnation and punish- 
ment. I know you to be a conscientious and industrious 
judge and a God-fearing man; and if the Senate shall ratify 
your nomination I do not fear that any passing criticisms 
which have fallen upon me for your selection will endure. 
I have been most sincerely desirous of obliterating all sec- 
tional divisions; have not been oblivious to the difficulties 



26 

under which the South has labored; but have been always 
most insistent that everybody must obey the law and must 
yield to every other man his rights under the law. 

With very great personal respect and with the best wishes 
for your happiness and usefulness, I am 
Sincerely, your friend, 

Bkxj. Harrison. 
Hon. Howell E. Jackson, 

Nashville, Tennessee. 



It would be unbecoming, Mr. Chairman, to attempt 
to add a syllable to this strong and faithful delinea- 
tion, drawn by a skillful hand and reflecting the 
grounds of an opinion made up under one of the 
gravest responsibilities that belong to the office of 
President of the United States. What higher sanc- 
tion! What truer patent of nobility! 



REMARKS OF MR. HAROLD G. UNDERWOOD. 

Gentlemen of the Bar of the Supreme 
COURT: As a junior member of this Bar, having 
been admitted during the last year that Mr. Justice 
JACKSON sat upon this Bench, and as a compara- 
tively young man, it is with some hesitation that I 
seek to voice the sentiments of my State, Wisconsin, 
in her grief at the loss of the great jurist who has 



27 

passed away; but I can only say that there is but 
one feeling throughout the Bar of my own State, as 
expressed personally and privately in my hearing, 
and at the meetings of our several Bar Associ- 
ations — it is that a giant in jurisprudence has 
been cut down in his prime, and at almost the 
beginning of the period of his greatest usefulness. 
Perhaps in no other vocation or profession of man 
is it true that the powers increase to the last. In 
the field of mechanics, manufactures, trade or com- 
merce, and in the active struggle of life in monetary 
battles, it is especially true that the younger and 
stronger push the older and weaker to the wall; but 
it is equally true, I believe, that the powers of judg- 
ment ripen with the advancing years, and that the 
Judge upon the Bench (occupying, as the servant of 
justice, the highest place, in my opinion, that is 
known to or filled by man), when worthy and com- 
petent, increases in usefulness, in power, and in 
wnsdom with every year that God permits him to 
remain. Certainlv such a man was Mr. Justice 
Jackson, and the loss to the world is the greater in 
that he had barely reached the three-score years, 
and just entered upon the final ten, of the allotted 
span of man's life, with his mental vigor unimpaired, 



28 

despite his bodily weakness, and crowned with the 
long and honorable record of continuous service in 
the forum and upon the Bench, beginning in his 
native State, and advancing step by step, not by 
political favor, but by merit and ability alone, and 
most frequently through the better judgment of 
political opponents, to the final post which he occu- 
pied and adorned. 

All or anything that I could say in his praise or 
honor has been already better said by others who 
knew him better, and who were more constantly 
associated with him. My own acquaintance with 
him was but slight, but it is a kindly and a pleas- 
ant recollection and will always remain such while 
life lasts. 

In conclusion, I merely wish to thank you for 
your patient attention, and to reverently lay Wiscon- 
sin's tribute of honor and respect upon the bier of 
the dead jurist. 

Remarks of Mr, A. H. Garland. 

Mr. CHAIRMAN: The very touching, though not 
wholly unexpected, news of the death of Mr. Justice 
JACKSON reached me last August at my home in 
the woods in Arkansas, and it grieved me as the 



2 9 

loss of one near to me; and I ventured then to 
express my feelings of sincere sorrow to his heart- 
broken wife at Nashville, Tennessee. That his 
death was in the nature of a personal affliction to 
me ma} r be understood when I state that he came 
to the United States Senate from my native State 
some two years after I had become a member of 
that bod}-, and though barely acquainted with him 
then, I knew a great many of his best friends for 
years back, and from them I had almost come to 
know him. 

His seat in the Senate was near to mine, and it 
was but a short time before we became well and 
closely acquainted, and before a friendship, as I 
believe, deep and sincere grew up between us, which 
lasted unbroken till his death. 

Quiet, amiable, and modest, always at his post, 
he did not aggress or push himself forward in the 
Senate, but took cheerfully the work assigned him 
there, and did it industriously and ably. His 
reports on matters referred to him were clear, con- 
cise, and cogent, and his discussions were always 
of similar character. He was untiring in investi- 
gation, and slighted no source from which he 
thought he could derive information. 



30 

His demeanor in the Senate was singularly genteel 
and refined, and in itself a model. 

During that time he impressed me as a man of 
fine constitution and of sound health, and one who 
took care of himself to preserve his good condition ; 
and I do not suppose that then among all his 
associates, from all appearances, there was one who 
had more than he the promise of life to a good green 
old age. But those secret-working forces of our 
complex organization, of which we know but little, 
and in the nature of things can not know much, 
settled it differently and struck the fatal blow when 
he would otherwise have been at his best, for his 
mind had not matured in fact. It was a growing 
and expanding mind, and would have continued to 
grow and expand for years to come if he had been 
spared. 

Before his term of service in the Senate expired 
he was nominated by the President, and at once 
confirmed by the Senate, for Circuit Judge. Imme- 
diately he quit the Senatorial place and duties and 
repaired to his new field, where his labors were to 
be exacting almost without cessation, and to a great 
degree oppressive. 

Not having asserted himself and gone forward in 



3i 

the Senate beyond the requirements of the work 
put upon him, and especially in work of a judicial 
character, it is fair to say many of his friends felt a 
serious apprehension he would not come up to the 
mark in his position of Judge on the Circuit of 
large and comprehensive work to which he had 
been sent. This misgiving was but of short 
duration ; not many weeks were required to dispel 
it. He went into the work before him not as a 
novice, but as a veteran trained and equipped for it, 
and he soon surprised those friends at the enormous 
amount of work he dispatched with rare industry 
and impartial ability. 

His name in a comparatively short time came up 
and was registered in the front rank of judicial 
officers of this country, and the decisions of no 
judge stood higher and were more eagerly sought 
for than his. 

Like the good and faithful servant, he was called 
up higher, and he was placed upon the Bench of 
the Supreme Court of the United States, where he 
felt at once " at home," needing no introduction, no 
pupilage, no waiting for a propitious time and an 
easy case to make his work public. 

Sworn in on the 4th of March, 1893, right away 



32 

he took his share of cases and worked them off, as 
though bred and born to the place. He disposed of 
several important cases before even the 3d of April, 
1893, when he delivered the opinion of the Court 
in Lasalles v. Georgia (14S U. S.), a case of great 
public interest, and drawing in question some of the 
nicest points that can come before the Courts of 
this country. His full share or quota of the work 
he kept up and performed until he could work no 
longer. 

He was as good and true a listener on any Bench 
as I ever saw. He listened not by odds, ends, and 
scraps of the case, but from the opening to the clos- 
ing thereof. He most always interrogated counsel 
in arguing a case, but he did not, as a rule, put but 
line question, and that went to the center, the very 
viscera of the case, and if counsel answered that, 
his case was argued without further delay or talk. 

IK- had, too, that rare but most valuable of all 
gifts to one dispensing justice, "that cold neutrality 
iif an impartial judge," which made no man who 
knew him afraid that the ordeal through which his 
rights had to pass before him would not be fair, just, 
and without prejudice. 

This good Judge and useful man has done his 



33 

work well and most fittingly, and it will stand the 
test of time; he now owes Nature nothing. And 
let us, as members of the Bar that knew him so well 
and admired him so much, treasure his name and 
memory, and xiuite in the invocation that he who 
comes to fill his place — and no one for his own name 
and fame need be overanxious to try that — may be 
equal to the great task he undertakes. 

The resolutions were then adopted and the meet- 
ing adjourned. 

9069 3 



SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Monday, November 25, 1895. 

Present: The Hon. Melville W. Fuller, Chief 
Justice; Stephen J. Field, John M. Harlan, 
Horace Gray, Henry B. Brown, George Shiras, 
Jr., Edward D. White, Associate Justices. 

Mr. Attorney-General Harmon addressed the 
Court as follows: 

It is with more than a sense of official propriety 
that I comply with the request of the Bar by 
presenting to the Court their resolutions relating 
to the late Justice Jackson. We of his home 
circuit knew him best. There were his birthplace 
and his home. There his first regular judicial work 
was done, by which he made the reputation that led 
to the call from across the party wall to a seat 
beside your honors. 

The active Bar always feel some misgivings when 
a man in public life, even though he has won dis- 
tinction there, is called to the Bench, especially 
when he has reached middle age. But they soon 
found that Howell Edmunds Jackson was not 

35 



36 

si > much a Senator who had been appointed Judge as 
a Judge who had served for a time as Senator. His 
mind, naturally broad and strong, symmetrically 
developed, controlled by stead}- purpose, and directed 
by industry which seemed almost weariless, would 
have enabled him to fill with credit any place which 
requires such qualities. He had so filled the high 
positions to which the resolutions refer, but he was 
peculiarly fitted for the duties of a Judge. He 
had in high degree patience to hear and consider, 
and firmness to decide. He had an even temper, 
judgment unprejudiced toward men or things, and 
a logical turn of mind which naturally shed irrele- 
vance and sophistry and inclined to accuracy of fact 
and correctness of conclusion. He loved justice in 
the concrete as well as in the abstract, and felt the 
pleasure a strong judge always takes in applying 
tlic principles of law to the redress of wrongs; but 
he knew and loved the system of judicial science 
too well to wrench or impair it, and imsettle the 
rights of the great body of the people, in seeking 
to avoid those occasional hardships against which 
human law, being necessarily general, can not pro- 
vide. So his decisions were of the kind which 
build and perfect our jurisprudence, and not a 



37 
series of mere arbitrary judgments. There are few 
among them which the legal mind hesitates to 
adopt among the precedents which keep the lcW 
in healthful life and growth. 

He was never chargeable with the blunders of a 
careless man or the vacillations of a weak one, but 
won respect even when he failed to convince, 
because he reached his conclusions by the broad 
highways and not by indirection or evasion. 

Some have excelled him in extent of learning and 
others in mere force of intellect, but few have 
equaled him in the comprehensive perception and 
abiding sagacity which result from a harmony of 
powers. His vigorous practical understanding was 
not to be bewildered by details, confused by doubtful 
or conflicting precedents, nor misled by refinements 
of reasoning. His decisions always bore the stamp 
of his own mind and character. 

Absorbed as he was in the exacting duties of the 
Circuit, his health was shaken before he realized it, 
but he never lost patience or resolution. The vigor 
he showed as a member of this Court in the number 
and promptness of his opinions, as well as by their 
lucid thoroughness, was in spite of the dragging of 
disease. And one of the most striking instances 



3S 

of the calm heroism of peace was the resumption 
of his place when the public interest required it 
in the Income Tax case. However opinion, legal 
and lay, was and nun- remain divided on the 
questions involved in that case, there is, and will 
he, no divided judgment about the high qualities 
shown by the opinion of Mr. Justice JACKSON, 
which all feared would be, and which was, his last. 
Though the effort required undoubtedly hastened 
the end, no true friend or patriot can feel regret, 
because it has put on imperishable record an 
example of devotion to public duty whose worth can 
not be too highly esteemed. 

The feeling of personal bereavement which pre- 
vails to a very unusual extent among those who 
knew Justice JACKSOX seems to me the highest 
tribute to his memory. There is no warmth in 
mere mental power or acquirement, nor in the most 
careful correctness. These may kindle admiration 
or envy, but not the affection which is the best 
tribute of man to man. I do not mean the mere 
result of pleasant ways, but the sturdy liking 
implied in the line — 

Hi makes no friends who never made- a foe.' 
lie had a kind and considerate nature, but it did not 



39 
blind him to his duty, nor swerve him from it; and 
he was free from that morbid excess of virtue which 
makes some good men unjust to their friends. 

Reputation and honors did not affect his quiet 
simplicity, nor add to the unobtrusive dignity which 
needed no assertion. 

The entire life of Justice Jackson illustrates the 
efficiency of steadfast devotion to duties which come 
without self-seeking and are met with diligence, 
earnestness, and sincerity of mind and purpose. 
His seven years as Circuit Judge gave him time to 
accomplish a most honorable career. Few positions 
put capacity and character to so severe a test as the 
office of judge of a court of first resort and general 
jurisdiction. This applies with great fitness to 
the Sixth Circuit, whose four States, reaching from 
Lake Superior to the Appalachian Range, like a 
cross-section of the great Republic, present almost 
every variety of population, business, and laws. 
Such a judge must admit and exclude evidence, sift, 
discern, and analyze facts, and apply legal prin- 
ciples generally, all without the advantage of asso- 
ciates, sometimes with slight aid from counsel, and 
often with little opportunity for study and reflection. 
Many of his judgments are final, and few are open 



40 

to complete review; but every act and utterance 
undergo the impartial and unerring scrutiny of the 
bar and the people. 

The powers of this highest of all tribunals are too 
great to be committed to one man alone. Their 
exercise is placed beyond the reach and above the 
need of review by the association of minds which 
stimulate, aid, and correct each other. "Who may 
so fitly join in the deliberations of such a court as 
those who have stood the highest tests which the 
profession affords? 

Justice Jackson's career as a member of this 
Court was cut short by his untimely death; but he 
served long enough to confirm the fitness of his 
selection and sharpen still further our sense of loss. 
Whoever shall be called to take that vacant place 
will find it none the easier to fill because it was 
last held by Justice JACKSON. 

The resolutions are as follows: 

The Committee appointed at a meeting of the Bar of the 
Supreme Court of the United Slates, held in the Supreme 
Court Room at the city of Washington, October 14, 1895, in 
memory of Mr. Justice JACKSON, to draft resolutions to be 
reported at an adjourned meeting, present for consideration 
the tolli wing : 

On August 8, 1895, Mi. Justice Howell Edmunds Jackson 
departed this life at his home, near Nashville, Tennessee. 



4i 

He was born at Paris, Tennessee, in 1S32, obtained his 
academic education in his native State, graduated at the 
University of Virginia, and took the degree of Bachelor of 
L,aws at the Cumberland University, in Tennessee. 

He practiced law at Jackson and Memphis before the civil 
war, and at once displayed those qualities which gave promise 
of the high rank which he subsequently attained in the pro- 
fession. 

He was an earnest believer in the doctrines of the Whig 
party, was devoted to the Union, and opposed secession. 
After his native State passed the ordinance of secession and 
was threatened with invasion, he, like so many others who 
would have sacrificed their lives, if by this they could have 
removed the cause of strife and assured a happy union, 
adhered, with all of the ardor of his nature, to the side his 
people had chosen in the conflict. The war suspended the 
activities of civil life, and holding an office under the Con- 
federate Government, which, while one of great trust, left 
him much leisure, he devoted himself throughout the war to 
the most laborious and systematic study of the law, thus 
acquiring an accuracy and breadth of legal knowledge which 
made him so fully equipped for all of the responsible duties 
which came to him. 

After the close of the civil war he practiced law in Jackson 
and Memphis, and achieved a reputation second to none of 
his competitors. His practice was varied, embracing office 
work of the most delicate and responsible character, and liti- 
gation in all of the State and Federal Courts, and while his 
services were justly prized as a counsellor and as a Chancery 
and Supreme Court lawyer, he was no less successful in the 
severest jury contests, where he achieved great triumphs, not 
by the graces of oratory, which he never cultivated, nor the 
meretriciousuess of cunning advocacy, which he scorned, but 



42 

by candor and earnestness, which won the confidence of 
the jury, and clear, forcible, and logical arguments, which 
convinced them. 

( )n account of his reputation as a man and lawyer, he was 
called to a seat upon the Court of Referees of Tennessee, 
which was a provisional Supreme Court created to assist the 
regular court to dispose of the vast accumulation of cases 
isioned by the civil war. He served on this court with 
great credit until its term expired. 

Though never having taken any active part in politics, he 
consented, on account of his great interest in the question of 
the settlement of the State debt of Tennessee, to become a 
candidate on the State Credit ticket for the State Senate. 

Following the custom established by immemorial usage in 
Tennessee, he met his opponent in joint debate and made the 
canvass with so much ability and persuasiveness as to win his 
election in a heated contest, in which he advocated high taxes, 
the most unwelcome cause that could be championed. 

This, though not suspected by him, was the initial point 
( if his national career. A deadlock in the selection of a United 
Status Senator, for which position he was not a candidate, was 
suddenly solved by his political opponents, who, moved by an 
estimate of his character like that which, on a later occasion, 
caused the President to nominate him to the Supreme Bench, 
came t<> his support as soon as his friends put his name before 
the Legislature ; and, cooperating with a majority of his own 
party, elected him on the first ballot. The offices of United 
.Slates Senator, Circuit Judge, and Justice of the Supreme 
Court all came to him in unbroken succession and without 
expectation or effort on his part. 

His career in these honorable and responsible positions is 
too well known to need recapitulation. 

His performance of the labors of his office, even when the 



43 

hand of death rested heavily upon him, will always remain a 
pathetic and inspiring picture in the memory of those who 
saw his heroic efforts. 

He was profoundly religious, and an elder in the Presby- 
terian Church. 

His manner was reserved, and yet no one found him difficult 
of approach. He was frank and courageous in expressing his 
opinions of men and measures, yet free from bitterness and 
personal invective. He was serious in affairs, but in the com- 
pany of friends was always jovial, enlivening conversation 
with sprightly humor and pointed anecdote. He felt and 
maintained the dignity of his office, and yet with those ameni- 
ties which in a judge invest the intercourse between bench 
and bar with an atmosphere which is as wholesome as it is 
gracious. 

He displayed exact learning, laborious investigation, unfal- 
tering courage, absolute impartiality, and broad patriotism ; 
therefore, be it 

Resolved, That the members of the Bar of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, profoundly impressed with the 
great loss sustained by the profession and the Nation in the 
untimely death of Mr. Justice Jackson, desire to record their 
esteem for the qualities which distinguished his short career 
on the Supreme Bench, and which gave such perfect assur- 
ance that he was a worthy successor of those distinguished 
Judges who have administered, with such fidelity and ability, 
the greatest trust ever confided by a Nation. 

Resolved, That we deeply sympathize with the bereaved 
family of Mr. Justice Jacksox, and that a copy of these 
resolutions be presented to them by the Secretary of this 
meeting. 

Resolved, That the Attorney- General be requested to pre- 
sent these resolutions to the Supreme Court in session and 
request that they be recorded. 



44 

The Chief Justice responded: 

Mr. Justice Jackson took his seat as a member 
of this Court on the 4th of March, 1S93, serving for 
the remainder of the current term, which closed on 
the 15th of May; sat through the next term, the 
month of March excepted; and heard argument in 
a few cases at October term, 1S94. 

Perhaps no greater eulogium can be passed on 
him than to say that, brief as was the period during 
which he was permitted to be with us, he impressed 
himself upon his colleagues and the country as 
possessed of the highest attributes of the judicial 
officer, and left enduring evidence of judicial emi- 
nence on the records of the Cotirt. 

There was no eccentricity in his success. He 
came here with a mind disciplined by years of 
experience in business and political activities, in an 
extensive professional practice and in the discharge 
of judicial duties and stored with knowledge of 
affairs as well as of books, knowledge qiialifying 
him to deal with questions promptly and with prac- 
tical wisdom, rather than knowledge of things 
"remote from use, obscure and subtle." 

Patience in hearing; assiduity in examination; 
quickness in grasp; clearness in thought; facility, 



45 
simplicity, and directness in expression; all these 
he had, and the)' enabled him to find the clew in 
records however lost in wandering mazes and make 
it plain for gni'dance to correct results. 

He profoundly realized that the administration of 
justice is the great end of human society, and that 
upon the conscientious labors of those to whom that 
administration is committed the protection of life and 
liberty and property depends, and so the endeavor to 
do justice ran like a golden thread through all his 
work. Added and superior to all other grounds of 
praise, it could well be said of him, as an eminent 
English judge said of himself, that there was one 
merit to which he could boldly lay claim — the deter- 
mination to do what was right, whenever that could 
be discovered. 

Of the cordial relations between Mr. Justice Jack- 
son and his brethren, which his engaging qualities 
of mind and heart rendered of the closest, I do not 
care to speak. We part with him with a keen sense 
of personal bereavement as he takes his place in the 
goodly company of those who have gone before, 
though still remaining with us one in the blood of 
common traditions and common labors. 

There is little in the performance of judicial 



4 6 

duty to attract popular attention or to win popular 
applause, but the influence of faithful service such 
as his — of labors so abundant — of a life shortened 
by effort in the public interest, "cut, like the 
diamond, with its own dust" — can scarcely be over- 
estimated, and sooner or later will receive its meed 
of recognition. 

The pathetic incident at the close of Mr. Justice 
Jackson's career, referred to by the Attorney-Gen- 
eral, was characteristic of the man. Devotion to 
duty had marked his course throughout, and he 
found in its inspiration the strength to overcome 
the weakness of the outward man, as, weary and 
languid, he appeared in his seat for the last time 
in obedience to the demand of public exigencv. 
The response to the roll call under such circum- 
stances gives complete assurance — though, indeed, 
it was not needed — that when, a few weeks later, he 
came to the passage of the river, Good Conscience, 
to whom in his lifetime lie had spoken to meet him 
there, lent him his hand and mi helped him over. 

The resolutions and the remarks l>v which they 
have been accompanied will be entered on our 
records, and the Court will now adjourn to Monday 
next. 

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